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Gut: the inside story of our body’s most underrated organ has apparently taken Europe by storm and it is way up the nonfiction bestseller lists in Spain (as La digestion es la cuestion) and France, where they have paraphrased the title of the Luis Bunuel classic film, calling it Le charme discret de l’intestin. The book was originally German, where it was a huge hit under its original title Darm mit charme (which translates as Charming bowels ). In Europe this fragrant title has even knocked the Pope off the top three.

And what has this to do with girls? It’s all about The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. The top fiction in France is La fille du train and in Italy it’s La ragazza del treno with La chica del tren in Spain. It’s everywhere else as well (way up the list in Britain and the U.S., and presumably if there is life on Mars, it will be up there as well).

The film version will be underway with British Rail soon and Emily Blunt is the girl. Tate Taylor, who directed the adaptation of that other big bestseller The Help is on this one. It is interesting that film rights were sold well before publication of the book, which implies that it was a train that was on schedule from the beginning.